Topic > The Benefits of Buying Organic and Conventional Foods

This document includes many reasons why you might buy organic food along with many reasons why conventional food is better. Explain the details of this controversial topic to people who don't understand what they're paying more for. With this article I hope to be able to convince you not to trust the organic market because it is not doing the right thing. Conventional food is better for you and the environment and it's cheaper, so what's not to like. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayOk, so go to the grocery store and buy cucumbers. In one section there are ordinary cucumbers for a dollar grown by Bismak. In another aisle they have organic cucumbers but these cucumbers cost two dollars. “Organically grown and raised by Bismak.” written on the side of the bag. So when you pay the extra dollar for cucumbers, you would expect the cucumbers to be 100% of what you want. But what the industry doesn't tell you about organic produce is that a certain number of crops have to be grown without pesticides for them to be organic, so you might pay more but it's really the same as dollar cucumbers. This is a problem I have with the industry. The industry makes organic food seem so good because it's more expensive, but that's not very true. There are many problems with the industry and pricing is just one of the problems. They charge you extra. But for what? This is what I will explain. Why you should buy conventional food over organic because the benefits of organic products are minimal or may actually harm you. Let's talk about the advantages of buying conventional products. One of the main factors between buying organic and conventional foods is cost-efficiency, or what you get out of those cucumbers for the extra dollar. This is how the industry can attract people to buy because people think that if it is more expensive it will be better for you. On the other hand, when you look for the cheapest products, you will always buy conventional food because they are easier to prepare and therefore cheaper. These conventional foods are in turn the most pesticide-inducing foods around. But are organic foods worth the 50% extra increase on average? based on this graph. (Pillsbury, n.d.). It shows that most conventional crops compared to organic crops have a 50% increase in price precisely because of the difficulty of growing organic food. Organic food is grown without the use of pesticides which society sees as a bad thing. Without pesticides these crops are more vulnerable to the environment causing many plant loss problems. They could be eaten or rot without these preservatives. Another problem is that if pesticides are added to an upwind crop field, these pesticides can be contaminated to the point where these crops aren't even organic in the first place, so you would end up paying extra money for the same thing. Another question is how much these price increases are worth to the consumer. The talk discussed how these foods can be mislabeled as organic if treated with pesticides. With organic food these prices aren't worth the product in the long run, according to a US News article. These organic foods are often considered more nutritious to eat. This is often why they are purchased due to this misconception. With these organic foods this is not possible. “Organic does not mean “nutritious,” and never has. Spinach can be grown conventionally, rather than organically, but it will still keep thenutritional profile of spinach, which is, of course, exceptional” (Katz, 2012). How can conventional spinach be less nutritious than organic spinach without additives? How can some people actually believe this? They have the same nutritional value because they are the same plant. If he were biased anyway it would make more logical sense that conventional spinach would have more nutrients if the pesticides had some kind of nutritional value. These organic foods are no longer nutritious and have been tested many times. They don't have enough evidence to prove it nor enough to disprove it. If they can't prove it right away it means the value is negligible. For you, organic products are considered better, but what does better mean for people? Nutritionally better? Wrong. Better price? Wrong. Also included in the article listed above is the fact that there are different ranges of organic products. "A label that says 'organic' is notable because it doesn't say '100% organic.' Ninety-five percent of the ingredients in such a product must be organic, but the rest can be...otherwise. In the products" made with organic ingredients" there need not be up to 30% of the content." (Katz, 2012). The industry isn't lying to you. The industry simply isn't telling the whole truth. For the extra money you pay for these organic products you should get 100% organic products. But they don't. How can you trust one of these companies for these labels? Can you ever get 100%? That's the problem. One of the ways they can trick you into paying extra for your products is by labeling them as natural. These natural labels make you think they are grown naturally without the use of pesticides when in reality they are not. Due to these common misconceptions in society, people are wasting their hard earned money on “more nutritious” “better for you” organic products. Some people might argue that these organic products are better because they are better for the environment. Based on research I have seen many articles about the impact of pesticides on the environment and this is not a good thing. “Some people buy organic food for environmental reasons. Organic farming practices are designed to benefit the environment by reducing pollution and preserving water and soil quality.” ("Organic Foods: They Are", 2014). This statement is a very valid point if you want to protect our environment, if you want to help the world, organic is one way. these pesticides used in crops are put on the outside of the product. When it rains, some pesticides can wash off and these pesticides can leach into the soil making it dangerous. If the land were to erode into a large water source, it could render it unusable. Or it could be dangerous for fish that have had side effects from consuming pesticides. When animals eat pesticides, the pesticides pass through to the animal that eats them. These are the serious environmental damages that conventional products cause to the environment. Along with rain causing wind runoff, pesticides can be carried into other crop fields, making organic crops no longer organic. Numerous studies have been conducted on genetically modified organisms. These organisms are regularly not accepted by society because they seem “illegal” to most people. These GMOs are ways that companies that grow crops modify the crops' "bad" genes. They can make these crops healthier for people, larger in size, and produce more seeds to plant. “Most developed nations do not consider GMOs safe. In more than 60 countries around theworld, including Australia, Japan and all countries of the European Union, there are significant restrictions or outright bans on the production and sale of GMOs. In the United States, the government approved GMOs based on studies conducted by the same multinationals that created them and profit from their sale. More and more often, Americans are taking matters into their own hands and choosing to give up the GMO experiment." (“Non-GMO Project,” n.d.). These GMOs have been tested and proven to be dangerous in many countries around the world. GMOs are not added to organic crops. This is another great reason why, if you are concerned about how these GMOs will affect you, you can choose not to purchase them through purchasing organic products. GMOs and pesticide runoff are very valid points you may have thought about before reading this. But are they worth what price? Are they that dangerous? These organic crops are better for us in other ways. These organic crops are made without the use of pesticides that accumulate in our bodies. these pesticides come from the products we eat along with the animals that eat any pesticide products. Pesticides are transmitted through consumption, so they usually stop in people. These pesticides have not been proven to be harmful or dangerous to humans, but they have not been proven to be beneficial to humans either. I guess a large amount of anything stored in fat is not a good thing, but who am I? These pesticides are stored in our fatty tissue. They've done a lot of tests but they can't figure out whether they're good or bad and that scares people. These tests are the reasons why some may buy organic foods because they don't want to take risks. Along with pesticides, organic produce has been proven to have health benefits. Organic produce was shown in one study to contain higher levels of antioxidants. Antioxidants are very good for your health and are necessary for your system to function more efficiently. “Overall, organic crops contain 17% more antioxidants than conventional crops, the new study found. For some classes of antioxidants, the difference was larger. A group of compounds known as flavonoids, for example, were 69% higher in organic products.” (Chang, 2014). This means that there is a significant increase in antioxidants in those organic products. They're not richer in nutrients, they're richer in antioxidants. These biological benefits are real benefits that biological people live hard for. These are very significant advantages to buying organic, but I will still stand by them. Organic food also has disadvantages. With organic foods the most common type of fertilizer is manure. this fertilizer is harmful to us and the environment. Manure fertilizer is made up of excrement and this excrement can contain serious diseases such as e.coli, which is a very deadly virus for people. “The safety concern that has been raised about organic foods is the issue of manure fertilizers. Some critics worry that using manure to fertilize organic crops could increase the risk of contamination by dangerous microbes such as Escherichia coli. "Organic farmers say that the soil is more alive on organic farms than on conventional ones. That life isn't just insects and worms; it's full of bacteria," Klurfeld says. (“Is organic food better?” n.d.). These manure farms are loaded with bacteria that can cause harm to us and plants. Together with Escherichia coli present in manure, these plants can.